


Dinner

by Sildae



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, post-tcw, the rebellion era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-16 01:05:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9266876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sildae/pseuds/Sildae
Summary: Dinner isn't always a piece of cake.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Posted originally to tumblr; archiving to AO3. Prompt series; written for the delightful alyyks.

Fives had seen some weird foods in his fifteen years of life, but _this_ —this took the _uj_ cake. **  
**

“That’s not—” Ahsoka broke off laughing. “That’s not how you eat that.”

Fives stared at bit of meat dangling between two twisted tines. It dripped a pungent, eye-smarting orange sauce and its little tentacles—or what he hoped were just tentacles—looped all over and through the contraption. “Then how in all hells do you eat this stuff?”

“Fives,” Rex growled.

Fives leaned forward to glare down the table; Rex sat at Ahsoka’s other side, sullen in the stiff uniform they’d both been given, adamantly not eating. 

“Hey,” Fives said, “if we’re going to be here for the next week, might as well sample local culture.”  Really, Rex had taken this whole guard duty shtick to new levels; it was like being back in the 501st, right before quarterly inspections. “Relax already.”

“He has a point, Rex,” Ahsoka said. 

She at least showed some pity and plucked the two tines out of Fives’ hand. Little circlets of silver and copper clinked along her entire arm as she readjusted her grip.

“Look around,” Ahsoka went on. “This is the northern capital, Industrial Sector. Up here, everyone looks the other way.” She tilted her montrals to the side and her headdress—a gauzy, draping, floor-length thing of deep crimson looped with watery lines of silver—fluttered like a bird for a few seconds. “Too many ties to the Guilds.”

She was right, although Fives was still getting used to her dressed up as some dynasty heir. He had to admit, Ahsoka wore it well.

 _Gotta remember to thank Senator Organa for this one._  

A plush job snooping out allies among the Ehosiq sector was far better than their last run. Fives could still taste the heavy coating of spice dust at the back of his throat; Kessel was a hell of a planet.

But Shili—yeah, he could get used to this.

Stone cities set sideways into red cliffs; a palace carved between spires and waterfalls; open air restaurants and shapely— _very_ shapely—servers. Fives had admired the view from the moment they had set down at the spaceport, ten clicks west; he’d thought Shili was all plains—with a few trees to break up the monotony—but Ahsoka’s low-atmo coordinates has proven him wrong.

And when a blue-skinned lady floated by, montrals curving inward to nearly kiss at the tips and every visible inch of her striped with thin streaks of pale green, he admired the view even more.

“These are _guin-te_ ,” Ahsoka said, holding up the tines and catching his attention with a little wave.

“A what?”

“ _Guin-te_.” The _n_ held for an extra beat and the _te_ was soft. Fives repeated it and Ahsoka nodded. Even that small movement sent her headdress into a frenzy of motion. She released the tentacle-thing back onto their table—Fives swore he saw it slither—and gave him back one tine, but held onto the other. “It’s for eating the sharish.”

They were seated at a low table inside one of Shili’s royal dining houses, a feast of questionable gastrointestinal taste spread in full glory before them. 

Shili didn’t seem to have a tradition of plates—or recognize basic galactic eating standards—so their entire meal sprawled across the polished stone and almost into their laps. Their supposed ‘food’ rose in miniature foothills of roasted vegetables or valleys of leathery greens, all of it carefully bordered by feathery red succulents. Not to mention those tentacle things that looked vaguely crustacean. At the very center, ruddy squares of meat coiled around a tall spiral of horn.

And more than a dozen wicked-looking metal utensils lined up along the table’s edge, like a trench line in a war zone. Ahsoka had 

Altogether, it looked more like a landscape than a meal, and Fives assumed it was part of the so-called ‘experience’, seated as they were before the tip of the cliffs, the city lights just now blooming and the sunset fading. Like most of the restaurants he’d seen in passing, the room was open to the sky. He assumed it didn’t rain much on Shili.

But a man had to eat, even if that meant chewing on the scenery.

“The shar- _eesh_?” he repeated.

“Right in one,” Ahsoka said, with a pleased little dip of her chin. She reached forward to twirl some of the greens, which rolled obediently into the sauce and came out as a neat, quaint wrap. Fives had to admit it looked tasty. He also suspected she cheated. “See? Easy.”

“Ha ha.” He held up his single tine. “Says the lady who can move stuff with—”

“Enough, Fives,” Rex snapped.

“You’re scaring the clientele, Rex,” Ahsoka said, and Fives could tell she nudged Rex, just by the shimmy of her headdress. “You have to eat something.”

But while Fives tried to coax a few greens into a circle, Rex angled toward them both, expression fierce beneath the open helmet he wore, adorned with Ahsoka’s supposed family crest. He somehow resembled an angry puffer turtle. 

At least Fives made the helmet look good.

“We’ve been here a full day.”

“Yes,” Ahsoka agreed, although her voice was a bit muffled around a mouthful of sharish. Fives twirled the greens faster.

“We should have made contact by now. The senator—”

“Is a patient man,” Ahsoka interrupted. She leaned away from Fives when orange sauce decided to fly, along with bits of green. “So we should be patient, too. A little—uh, slower, Fives.”

“I know you cheated,” Fives grumbled, but a few seconds later, the leaves accommodated him and folded into a flower of a roll. “Ah-ha!” But when he lifted the tine, the whole thing flopped back to the table. Ahsoka snorted.

Fives muttered a few choice words—in Huttese—but Ahsoka spoke over him. “We need to try. And we need to trust him. He knows what he’s doing.”

Fives succeeded—finally—and waved the sharish roll at Rex. “And if things haven’t moved forward by _guin-te_  time tomorrow night, we can do things the old fashioned way.” 

Ahsoka shot Fives an exasperated look, but beyond her—to Fives surprise— Rex relented. “One more day.”

And, the matter settled, he grabbed his own  _guin-te_ , speared a piece of meat from the table’s centerpiece, and plopped it into his mouth.

“Uh, Rex—I don’t think—” Ahsoka grabbed his arm, circlets jingling.

Fives shook his head and held up one of the other utensils, a mean-looking corkscrew that could probably serve as a torture device in a pinch. “He’s using the wrong one, isn’t he? What a rookie.”

Rex’s glare renewed and Ahsoka burst into laughter again.

“Rex, do you remember what I told you about thimiars?”


End file.
